Abstract

In the fall of 2016, a group of artists and educators met regu-

larly over the course of three months to explore the many ways

in which the human body mediates experience and knowledge.

In their time working together, the Bodies as Media Working

Group (BaM) explored the ways in which the (human) body co-

mes to know, understand, and communicate ancestry, memory,

ecology, emotionality, creativity, and even death. Tis working

group was created as part of the School of Apocalypse (SoA), a

NYC-based community of learning that examines connections

between creative practice and survival. Te BaM working group

encapsulated its learning process by designing and producing a

resource in the form of a deck of cards containing instructions

and prompts meant to be activated as a ritual that aims to “turn

on” people’s body awareness and to prepare their bodies to learn.

In designing a pedagogical tool for the body, BaM aims to re-

constitute the individual and social body contained most com-

monly in the classroom as open, trusting, and alert. Te tool

thereby redesigns the space within which learning takes place

without making any physical alterations to it, but rather by recon-

figuring the group’s relationship to it and within it.

Keywords:

body, medium, tool, learning, ritual, pedagogy, classroom

Inmaterial 03. Nelesi Rodriguez, Eugenia Manwelyan

Resumen

Durante el otoño de 2016, un grupo de artistas y educadores se

reunió regularmente a lo largo de tres meses para explorar las

numerosas maneras en las que el cuerpo humano puede mediar

experiencia y conocimiento. Durante el período de trabajo con-

junto, el grupo “Cuerpos como medios” (Bodies as Media -BaM)

exploró la forma en la que el cuerpo nos ayuda a conocer, absorber

y comunicar conocimiento ancestral, memoria, ecología, emocio-

nalidad, creatividad e incluso la muerte. Este grupo de trabajo se

creó en el contexto de la Escuela del Apocalipsis (School of Apo-

calypse-SoA), una iniciativa con base en NYC que analiza las

relaciones entre la supervivencia y las prácticas creativas. El BaM

encapsuló las lecciones aprendidas durante su trabajo en con-

junto, diseñando y produciendo un recurso en forma de un mazo

de cartas con una serie de instrucciones para ejecutar un ritual

que busca activar los cuerpos de los individuos involucrados en

cualquier experiencia de aprendizaje. Al diseñar una herramienta

pedagógica para el cuerpo, el BaM intenta reconstituirlo en su

naturaleza individual y social y transformar el cuerpo común-

mente reprimido en el aula en uno abierto, cómodo y alerta. Por

lo tanto, la herramienta rediseña el espacio en el que tiene lugar el

aprendizaje, sin necesidad de alteraciones físicas, sino modifican-

do la relación de los cuerpos con respecto a sí mismos, entre ellos,

y con su entorno.

Palabras clave:

cuerpo, medio, herramienta, aprendizaje, ritual, pedagogía, aula

Inmaterial 03. Of Vessels, Conduits and Instruments: Designing Ritual

and Pedagogy to Reflect on Bodies as Media

A deck of cards, wristbands, and an envelope - elements of the tool developed by BaM

Take a deep breath and be perfectly still...

Hesitant, some people in the room comply. Others, trusting, even close

their eyes, as if this line were part of a score they already knew by heart.

Hold your breath. Notice the body part that feels most restless. Here and

there, eyes start scanning the room for clues and reassurance - they find

them. Notice the thoughts and feelings that come up through this stillness. By

now, everyone in the room seems to be in sync through this moment

for introspection. People are attentive, waiting to hear what the leading

voice will say next. When you just can’t hold your breath any longer, exhale

and release that body part - give it all the movement it calls for. Tat last

instruction, given with perfect timing, is much appreciated, unleashing

yawns, stretches, swings, and sighs enacted by the bodies in the room.

Bodies that have arrived to a sterile classroom now find themselves

having subtly subverted its most familiar “come in - sit down - stop

talking - pay attention to the teacher” pathway. Tis simple act that is at

once novel and embodied generates energy, alertness, and a sense that

something new and unexpected can happen. Now, let the lesson begin.

Inmaterial 03. Nelesi Rodriguez, Eugenia Manwelyan

Designing Embodied Pedagogies for Effective Learning

In the fall of 2016, a group of artists and educators met regularly over

the course of three months to explore the many ways in which the

human body mediates experience and knowledge. In their time wor-

king together, the Bodies as Media Working Group (BaM) explored

the ways in which the (human) body comes to know, understand, and

communicate ancestry, memory, ecology, emotionality, creativity, death.

Tis working group was created as part of the School of Apocalypse, a

NYC-based community of learning that examines connections between

creative practice and survival.

Te School of Apocalypse has no fixed definition of apocalypse or

survival, but engages with the fundamental questions that the themes

provoke. Its rotating faculty invites a range of thinkers, artists and

practitioners to present programming on topics that fit this realm of

exploration. Subjects of study are theoretical as well as hands on, and

emphasize the integration of observational and material practices found

in mystical traditions, creative modalities and scientific field work. BaM

emerged as a working group within the School of Apocalypse with

these foundational questions: what are the qualities and consequences

of body erasure in neoliberal society, and what are the ways in which the

body is a powerful medium? BaM embarked on an experiential inquiry

to investigate how the body survives and persists within a culture that

is, in many ways, indifferent to its wisdom, fearful of its ephemerality,

and disdainful of its leaks and needs.

Te BaM working group encapsulated its learning process by designing

and producing a resource for learning communities. In the form of a

deck of cards containing instructions and prompts, the tool is meant to

be activated as a ritual that aims to “turn on” people’s body awareness

and prepare their bodies to learn. A pedagogical tool for the body, the

ritual proposed by BaM aims to reconstitute the individual and social

body contained most commonly in the classroom as open, trusting,

and alert. Te tool thereby redesigns the space within which learning

takes place without making any physical alterations to it, but rather by

reconfiguring the group’s relationship to it and within it. It is this open

space that emerges within, between, and surrounding the present bodies

that creates a fertile learning environment. Te prompts on the cards -

the little games - act as invitations to arrive, to situate oneself through

situating one’s body, to connect with the intention to learn.

Inmaterial 03. Of Vessels, Conduits and Instruments: Designing Ritual

and Pedagogy to Reflect on Bodies as Media

On the Epistemologies of the Body as Media

Contemporary society seems to be on a resolute quest to erase the

human body: significant developments in virtual reality, social spaces

that rely solely on digital interface, automation and drones, self-driving

cars, wearable devices... they all represent efforts to make our world a

bodiless one. Currently, many digitally mediated practices are shaping

and being shaped by the contemporary paradigm of the productive self,

a model in which individuals’ identities are highly determined by their

professions, people are expected to do what they love, and boundaries

between life and work have collapsed. However, this take on the self

that perceives the body as a tool (if not an obstacle) for productivi-

ty has not always been predominant. From the Hellenic practice of

“taking care of the self ” in preparation for political life —epimelesthai

satou¹— to the quantified self, ² human beings have used their bodies

¹ In his seminar “Technologies

of the Self ” (1982), Michel

as tools in many different ways. People’s take on the body as a medium

Foucault looked at the simila-

has shifted throughout time: bodies have been perceived as vessels to

rities and differences between

several technologies through

contain the self ( i.e., religious subjectivities in which the body serves as

which humans have attempted

a “host” for the soul for as long as a human being exists in the terrestrial

self-improvement across time,

including the Greek notion of

plane); proxies to facilitate connection ( i.e., the very word “medium” in

“taking care of the self ”.

occultism is used to refer to a body that can be possessed by spirits and

² “Quantified self ” is one of the

deities trying to establish communication with the physical world); can-

names people use to refer to

vases where society imprints its norms ( i.e., discussions on essentialism

digital self-tracking, a practice

and its opposite that emerged within feminist studies and have since

that consists of using digital

devices to monitor one or

expanded exponentially to consider gender, its troubles and its possible

more aspects of one’s life in

transformations); models to understand and shape the urban environ-

order to assess and improve

oneself.

ment ( i.e., Vitruvius and Le Corbusier exemplifying two distinct eras

when architecture became tied to the human body and its proportions).

More recently, neoliberal societies characterized by atomized lives and

decentralized mechanisms of control have reinforced perceptions of

the body as a productive tool. Tis is a model that carries on without

considering its human cost. As Jonathan Crary points out, “24/7 [an

expression that embodies the nonstop pace characteristic of this period]

is a time of indifference, against which the fragility of human life is

increasingly inadequate”.³ From social media moderators who spend

³ 2013, p.70

hours in front of a computer looking at inappropriate content reported

by users to freelancers who have to make themselves available any day

at any time, the dynamics imposed by the neoliberal model have serious

effects on people’s physical, mental, and emotional health. Human

bodies are subject to monitoring and regulation by different actors who

seek to guarantee that these bodies keep up with the demands of neo-

Inmaterial 03. Nelesi Rodriguez, Eugenia Manwelyan

liberalism. And so, many of our learning environments are taking these

dangerous cues - teaching only to the mind and instrumentalizing the

body to exhaustion.

Many of our most common places are designed, both socially and

spatially, with the body as an incidental nuisance, rather than as the very

site and nexus point where the goal of the space is achieved. Nowhere

is this more obvious and insidious than in our modern-day classrooms.

Forward facing desks designed to subvert desires to socialize and work

together also serve to train the body in physical stillness. Compartmen-

talizing physical activity with proper learning activity reinforces the fal-

sehood that thinking and learning happen in the “mind”, while exercise

and play happen in the body. In her book Teaching to Transgress: Educa-

tion as the Practice of Freedom, the feminist scholar and radical educator

Bell Hooks captures how deeply erased our bodies are in the classroom:

“When I first became a teacher and needed to use the restroom in the

middle of class, I had no clue as to what my elders did in such situa-

tions. What did one do with the body in the classroom?”⁴

⁴ 1994, p. 191, our emphasis.

With this rationale as a starting point, the BaM working group won-

dered how the very notion of the body as a medium could be used to

design a pedagogical and research tool to undermine the ideas of the

“productive self.” BaM wondered instead how the body could serve as a

point of access to different ways of knowing, a repository of and con-

nector between knowledge and experience, and as a means for trans-

gression and connection between disciplines and beyond norms. Rather

than exploring the latest horizons of somatic dematerialization, our

research leverages the body’s corporeal materiality in order to subvert

the body erasure trends of the increasingly transhuman/posthuman

contemporary cultures.

The Ground and the Goal: Learning about the Body as a

Medium for Learning

Te School of Apocalypse working groups are vessels for collaboration

that gather individuals with different knowledge, experiences, and skills

around a topic of common interest in order to discuss it, experiment

with it, and create something together. Bodies as Media working group

members met seven times over the course of three months. Te first

of those meetings was dedicated to setting up a structure and a plan

for our collaboration. In the last two meetings, we workshopped and

Inmaterial 03. Of Vessels, Conduits and Instruments: Designing Ritual

and Pedagogy to Reflect on Bodies as Media

created a resource that is designed to be used by any group in order to

activate and bring awareness to the body in preparation for the learning

experience. During the four meetings in the middle, we explored four

different instances of the body as a medium, one per session: the body

as inheritor of ancestry and carrier of memory; the body as/and within

an ecosystem; the body and (terrestrial) existence; and body and crea-

tivity. Trough intellectual inquiry, experimentation, and play, working

group members took turns leading experiences that unlocked body

movements, poses, and processes long forgotten by many members of

the group. Unlocking our bodies very often also meant unlocking our

minds and our hearts.

We concluded that the body is a medium for a great many things, and

that in order to connect with this tremendous wealth of information

and knowledge one must understand and experience the body itself

as a medium for learning. Contrary to how it is often treated in the

classroom, the body is not a mobile unit that carries atop of it the great

and powerful mind. All knowledge, everything we have ever known,

we have learned in our bodies, and resides in our bodies to this day. To

connect to all of this information, to understand the body as a medium

for knowledge, we must open our whole selves to the learning moment.

Tus, BaM created a sort of opener - a tool, designed to be used as a

ritual in any learning environment in order to potentiate personal expe-

rience and community building.

The Learning Tool as a Deck of Cards, a Ritual, a Choreography

To activate the body as a medium for learning, BaM designed and pro-

duced a device that consisted of a deck of cards, each one with a score

for a choreography (a collective action) that is meant to bring aware-

ness to a specific way in which our bodies mediate experience and/or

knowledge, and a set of wristbands in different colors, each one mat-

ching one card. Tis device provides the resources to perform a ritual

to unlock movement, acknowledgement, and reflection in the bodies

present in any learning setting.

Inmaterial 03. Nelesi Rodriguez, Eugenia Manwelyan

How to use the deck and wristbands:

For best results, enact this ritual at the beginning of each class to activate the

body as a medium for learning.

1. Place the deck of cards in the middle of the learning space and gather ever-

yone around.

2. Pick a card and read its contents aloud, which will prompt an action.

3. Upon finishing each action, another member of the community will come

to the center and choose the next card at random. (An action is “finished”

whenever anyone decides to pick up and read the next card.)

4. Repeat this process until all the cards have been read aloud.

5. Invite participants to choose a wristband associated with the card that

resonates with them the most on that given day. (Wristbands are color-coded

to match the cards.)

6. For the remainder of the session, the wristband helps each person to bring

awareness back to the body and its role at that moment of learning.

7. Proceed with the lesson.

Inmaterial 03. Of Vessels, Conduits and Instruments: Designing Ritual

and Pedagogy to Reflect on Bodies as Media

Emotional and Psychological Exposure

Some emotions and states of mind squat in our bodies. As a result,

our muscles tense up, we hunch, we forget to breathe - we somatize.

Locating the signs of particular emotions and thoughts in the body

and acting upon it, we can try to turn around that vectoral relationship

(from psyche body to body psyche).

Psychotizing or emotizing as an antidote to somatizing.

Emotional and Psychological Exposure

Our thinking-reflecting body

Te body that feels and thinks

Take a deep breath and be perfectly still. Notice the body part that feels most

restless. Notice the thoughts and feelings that come up through this stillness.

When you just can’t hold your breath any longer, exhale and release that body

part - give it all the movement it calls for.

Inmaterial 03. Of Vessels, Conduits and Instruments: Designing Ritual

and Pedagogy to Reflect on Bodies as Media

Heredity, Ancestry, and Memory

Inspired by recent research on embodied ancestral trauma, this card

invites people to think of their bodies as repositories of knowledge and

experience passed down by previous generations and at the same time

as collectors of information and wisdom that will be imprinted on the

ones to come. If our bodies can hold traumas from our ancestors, what

other types of knowledge do our bodies inherit? And, more important-

ly, how can we access that knowledge and work with it? Our inherited

bodily features can serve as an entry point to ancestral insight.

Heredity | Ancestry | Memory

Our inherited-ancient body

Te body as a carrier of time

Choose a physical feature that you have inherited. Visualize who you inheri-

ted this feature from. Who did they inherit it from, and who did they inherit

it from? Travel far back in time, moving from memory to imagination.

Locate this feature in your body. Touch it, wiggle it, shake it, flex it, engage it

in movement.

Inmaterial 03. Of Vessels, Conduits and Instruments: Designing Ritual

and Pedagogy to Reflect on Bodies as Media

Environment - Culture

How does the body exist and negotiate its way through the economies

of the living? Te body is this ultimate producer - of things, of other

bodies, of ideas - and through some series of exchanges and value

propositions, the body makes its way through the world, via its cultural

pathways. Te body learns, in its most porous moments, it appropriates

and makes its own that which was everyone’s and no one’s. At once a

producer, consumer, steward, and inheritor of culture, the body works

to understand, interpret, and impact the external world. Te body is

able, quite magically, to synthesize and make sense of the cacophony of

sights and sounds around us, so as to harmonize with it and within it.

Environment | Culture

Our making-taking body

Te trained body

Make a sound, any sound. Keep making it. Listen to the sounds directly

around you and try to engage with them, start to collaborate. Now listen to

the whole sound of the group and play to that collective sound. See if you can

make some music.

Inmaterial 03. Of Vessels, Conduits and Instruments: Designing Ritual

and Pedagogy to Reflect on Bodies as Media

Nutrition

Our bodies take - air, food, water, sun, embraces, words... What we let into ourselves has a huge

impact on how we feel and who we are. But our bodies also give - fluids, sounds, glances, embra-

ces, words… And what we give and let go also determines us. Sensing and sensitizing to these

inputs and outputs grows the awareness of our bodies as actors, mediators, beneficiaries / victims

of such circulation.

Nutrition | Transformation | Inputs and Outputs

Our digesting-excreting body

Te body that takes and gives

Stand up and move around the room. Notice other people’s movements and gestures. Begin to exchange

gestures with one another. Notice your body-expressions that have been taken and performed by others.

Inmaterial 03. Of Vessels, Conduits and Instruments: Designing Ritual

and Pedagogy to Reflect on Bodies as Media

Physical Activity and Sensory Experience

What happens when we grow senses and sensitivities in our bodies?

What happens when we feel something on our skin, think it with our

minds, and experience it with our emotions? How can this heightened,

integrated awareness release blocks to learning and open the student

socially, physically, emotionally, and intellectually? Whether our bodies

atrophy from exhaustion and/or disuse or whether we live in a state of

deep, active body awareness, there is an opening that occurs when we

come to see and know the textures, tastes, smells, warmths around us.

When we do not simply let these stimuli pass us by, unaware of their

impact, we grow agency through awareness. We consider the complex

interplays, causal and reactive, between the physical, emotional, inte-

llectual, and social self. We know that when we change the state of one,

the other three follow; and when one is degraded or ignored, the others

can be dragged along down with it. We can change the body to change

the mind, and vice versa, so our task was to create a choreography that

changed the state of the body and, along with it, the state of the thin-

king, feeling, and interacting in order to optimize learning.

Physical Activity | Sensory Experience

Our feeling-doing body

Te body that perceives

Start smelling different parts of your body. Take in a variety of smells. Start

blowing into your body from a variety of distances. Finally, put your lips

directly on your skin and blow as hard as you can.

Inmaterial 03. Of Vessels, Conduits and Instruments: Designing Ritual

and Pedagogy to Reflect on Bodies as Media

Principles in Practice

In our process of devising this resource that acknowledges the central

role of the body in learning, three principles guided our thinking and

making. Te first, Ritual/Choreography, addressed our desire to create a

“sacred” space at the beginning of any lesson that could be repeatedly

used by people to reconnect with their bodies, one another, and the space

around them. Creating this special moment, outside the structures of the

topic and syllabus, works to catalyze awareness of the multiple points

of access to knowledge and experience they offer. Te second, Layering/

Adaptability, referred to the body as an entry point to multiple lear-

ning experiences (the body as an enabler of connections with ancestry,

memory, feelings, sensations, other beings, other worlds…) and to the

possibility of using the tool to focus on some or all of these levels as each

learning group sees fit. As such, we created this tool so that the deck

could keep growing, with new cards added at will. Finally, the principle

of Materiality/Visibility emphasizes the importance of the bodies present

in a space at the moment of learning. Te deck of cards and the wrist-

bands that accompany them were created considering the material and

affective aspects of the resource to potentiate embodied experience.

(1) Ritual/Choreography

“Ritual” and “choreography” are words often associated with automation

and routine. But curiously, both of them can also have a radically different

reading as facilitators of awareness-creation and intention-setting. BaM

used choreography and ritual in this latter sense. Interaction and con-

tinuity, the principles of John Dewey’s philosophy of experience,⁵ were

⁵ “Education and Experience”,

1938

prioritized in discussions on what the learning tool ought to contain, how

it was to be designed and produced, and why it was necessary to prepare

bodies for learning. Ritual and choreography would help us achieve the

principles both of interaction and continuity. Te deck of cards, inspired

by the concept of playing cards and tarot cards, references mystery, explo-

ration, investigation, and play. Each card from this deck contains a score

for a choreography. Te choreographies thrust the bodies into the pre-

sent moment, bringing awareness and agency to change over time. Tese

choreographies are meant to be performed at the beginning of an expe-

rience, as a ritual that offers an opportunity to stop/separate/mark time by

entering into a sequence (first this, then this, then this) and, in doing so,

bringing awareness to the body/mindset and offering an opportunity to

change it. We understand this ritual as an instance of both hyper-aware-

ness and habit, or hyper-awareness turned into habit.

110

Inmaterial 03. Nelesi Rodriguez, Eugenia Manwelyan

(2) Layering/Adaptability

Te specific themes of the working group sessions were wildly different:

ancestry and memory, ecosystems, terrestrial existence, and creativity.

Te approaches used by its members to facilitate each session were

equally diverse: from food sharing, body movement, and guided medi-

tation, to artmaking and discussion circles. Learning communities, just

as any group of people, are neither homogenous nor the same. Tus,

it made no sense to create a one-size-fits-all tool. Te deck of cards

reflects multiplicity in its modularity, expansion, and appropriation po-

tential. People can use the deck as we have proposed, or in any number

of ways they choose.

Since sharing this tool with the School of Apocalypse and the Parsons

School of Design community at the beginning of 2017, we realized

that there are at least three ways of activating this tool: the cards can be

called upon one by one into the learning space (as stated in the intro-

duction card), one card can be chosen at random as if this were a tarot

deck, or a specific card could be chosen, depending on the topic/goal

of a given lesson. Anyone could make additional cards and add them

to the deck. Tis living deck can always be expanded. People are free to

appropriate it and activate it as they see fit.

(3) Materiality/Visibility

Working on acknowledging and re-embodying the time and place of

learning and the experiences of embodied learning had a profound im-

pact on the design of the final product. First, the deck is a physical tool

(rather than a digital one), something that people can sense and hold.

Second, it is a beautiful artifact, designed to feel precious, special, and

carefully crafted. Finally, the wristbands that accompany the cards aim

to extend body openness and awareness beyond the performance of the

ritual itself: just as the old trick of tying a string around the finger as a

reminder of something, the wristbands keep us returning to our bodies

for the remainder of the lesson.

In the BaM working group, bodies were both complex - polyhedral

- objects of study and multipurpose tools that enabled us to access

different knowledges. But in furthering our understanding of bodies as

media, we realized that this “opening” of our bodies to their rich array

of possibilities can be facilitated by design. Just as some technologies

shut down, ignore, or re-mediate our bodies, others can be used to

reclaim, remediate, and potentiate the presence of bodies in space. Tese

radical technologies of presence help us reorient ourselves. To be cons-

Inmaterial 03. Of Vessels, Conduits and Instruments: Designing Ritual

and Pedagogy to Reflect on Bodies as Media

Detail of cards and matching wristbands

tantly reminded that we already posses the ultimate technology —our

own bodies— can be deeply liberating and transformatory.

Postscript: What can actually happen when we prepare our

bodies to learn

Upon finishing the tool, Nelesi Rodriguez, one of the BaM working

group members, started using the deck of cards in her classroom on a

regular basis. Integrated Seminar 2 is a first-year undergraduate course

that seeks to provide opportunities for students to explore and better

understand how research, thinking, and making are interconnected. Tis

course is a requirement for all undergraduate students at the Parsons

School of Design. Te class was conformed by a group of 17 students

majoring in Fine Arts, Product Design, Strategic Design and Manage-

ment, Fashion, Illustration, Communication Design, and Architecture.

Nelesi added an additional component to the practice of activating the

body for learning by beginning each class with a brief conversation hi-

ghlighting one specific way in which the body enables knowledge and/

or experience. After this very brief introduction, someone in the group

(not necessarily the instructor) proceeded to read the corresponding

112

Inmaterial 03. Nelesi Rodriguez, Eugenia Manwelyan

card while the rest participated however they felt appropriate. (Students

were invited to enact the score, but they were allowed to just listen to

the instructions or leave the room if they wanted to.) Upon finishing

the action prompted by the card and depending on the classroom mood

each day, Nelesi invited students to comment on their experiences

enacting the score and/or simply thanked everyone for becoming present

in the classroom.

Predictably, the cards were initially met with skepticism, disorientation,

and even some apathy; students quickly started appreciating them as

they realized they brought them all in sync and opened spaces for shared

release, laughter, reflection, and vulnerability. On their last day as a lear-

ning community, Nelesi posed a set of questions and invited students to

anonymously share with her their thoughts and feelings about the ope-

ning ritual they had enacted week after week.⁶ We present a collection of

⁶ Te questions guiding stu-

dents’ reflections were: What

student responses, which begin to shed light on the ways in which this

did you think and how did

tool can have an effect (or not) on individual and collective learning.

you feel when we started using

the cards? Have your thoughts

and feelings evolved as we

[At first] I didn’t think that it was productive or useful hence I felt weird and

continued to use them? How?

Do you think it has affected

uncomfortable doing it. Despite still being a little uncomfortable doing them

your individual experience in

it made me appreciate it because everyone all participated together [sic].

this class? How? Do you think

it has affected our experience

as a group? How?

At first I was confused, but I started realizing why we used them. I started li-

king some of the exercises. It hasn’t really affected my experience in the class, but

as a group it has made us more aware of each other and what other people do.

I really liked the cards, it was nice to do them at the beginning of each class

because it really woke me up and got me ready to learn. I also really enjoyed

and looked forward to doing a new card every class. It really connects us as a

class when we participate in these things together.

I thought the idea of using the cards was interesting but not very necessary.

In some way it started making me feel more peaceful before starting the class.

At the beginning it was weird and awkward but it then became like a ritual,

part of the class. It also acted as a way of connecting to others and laughter

too. I think it did affect our group/class since it made it a more approachable,

secure place to express our work.

Inmaterial 03. Of Vessels, Conduits and Instruments: Designing Ritual

and Pedagogy to Reflect on Bodies as Media

Reference List

Crary, J., 2013. 24/7 Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep. New York/London: Verso.

Dewey, J., 1938. Experience and Education. First Touchstone Edition.

Dychtwald, K., 1986. Bodymind. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam.

Foucault, M., 1982. Technologies of the Self. In: Foucault, M., Martin, L., Gutman, H. and Hu-

tton, P., eds. 1988. Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. Cambridge: University

of Massachusetts Press.

Foucault, M., Martin, L., Gutman, H. and Hutton, P., eds. 1988. Technologies of the Self: A Seminar

with Michel Foucault. Cambridge: University of Massachusetts Press.

Hooks, B., 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom.

New York/London: Routledge.

Wolf, G., 2010. Te Data Driven Life. Te New York Times, 28 Apr. Available online at: <http://

www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/magazine/02self-measurement-t.html?_r=0>

[Accessed 10 December 2015].

_______, 2009. “Know Tyself ”. Te New York Times, 22 June. Available online at: <http://archi-

ve.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/17-07/lbnp_knowthyself ?currentPage=all>

[Accessed 9 May 2015].

114

Inmaterial 03. Nelesi Rodriguez, Eugenia Manwelyan

Eugenia Manwelyan

Choreographer, ecologist, and producer. She is the co-founder of Arts

and Ecology, Director of Eco Practicum, a member of the Best Praxis

art collective, and a founding faculty of the School of Apocalypse. Her

work is rooted in the pedagogies of power, social choreography, and the

connections between creative practice and survival. As a visiting faculty

at Columbia University, Eugenia has worked on environmental plan-

ning and arts projects in the New York bioregion, as well as in India,

Vietnam, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine. She holds a BA in International

Development from McGill University and her MS in Urban Planning

from Columbia University.

Nelesi Rodriguez

Venezuelan-born media educator, researcher, and practitioner. She’s a

Fulbright Scholar with a MA in Media Studies from Te New School.

Her research focuses on contemporary subjectivities and understan-

dings of the body as a medium. Nelesi often employs creative practice

as a tool for inquiry. At the same time, her creative and intellectual

explorations inform her pedagogy. Currently, she teaches at the Parsons

School of Design and conducts research at Te New School and the

School of Apocalypse.

Inmaterial 03. Of Vessels, Conduits and Instruments: Designing Ritual

and Pedagogy to Reflect on Bodies as Media